Bad To The Bone (17 page)

"And I saw her for what she was. A twist
looking for a new twist. An aging blond who had always gotten off
on wrapping men around her little finger. Only now she was getting
old, the wrinkles were starting to show, her ass was falling, her
thighs turning to cottage cheese—and the men weren't lining up at
her door anymore. She was slipping and she knew it. Because, face
it, there's always another younger, prettier blond nipping at your
heels." She stared at me. "It's enough to turn you gay, don't you
think?"

I took a healthy gulp of my drink. Best to
get tipsy after all.

"She was just here for the power play," the
owner explained. "For the thrill of being the belle of the ball
again. I took one look at her and I could read her mind. She
figured, hey, my stock has gone down with the men, let's give it a
whirl with the women. They're probably just a bunch of dumpy old
dykes anyway. I can have them eating out of my hand."

"Is that what happened?"

She shrugged. "Not really. Believe it or
not, most of my customers prefer their women a little more real, a
little more genuine."

"I believe it."

"But enough women bought her drinks and fed
her ego to keep her coming back. She started showing up regularly.
For a while, at the beginning, I think she even hit it off with one
those bored housewife-types who wandered in. A real babe, in fact.
Looked a bit like Sigourney Weaver. But the housewife disappeared.
Which I could have predicted. She was interested in fantasy, not
reality."

"But Tawny kept coming in?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah." She hesitated. "Look, I don't
condone drugs on the premises. I could lose my license. But I'm not
naive. If I had to guess, I'd say your blond kept coming back here
for two reasons. First, to mooch as much nose candy as she could.
Then, once she wore out her welcome glomming freebies, to pick up
extra change blackmailing my customers so she could pay for her
own."

She nodded toward the photos. “That redhead
in the photos? She's a personal friend of mine, so I already knew
about her troubles with the blond. But you said half the stack was
missing. How many of my other customers are in the same trap?" She
wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked sad. "Someone
has to stop her. People come in here to be themselves and that
bitch is using it against them. A lot of these women can't go to
the police because it will get out that they're gay."

"So what?" I said. "In this day and age,
what's the big deal?"

"I'll let Francine explain the big deal. She
tells it better than me. I've been out so long, I couldn't even
tell you where my closet was."

"Francine is the redhead?"

“Yeah. She'll be here in a few minutes."

"Thanks for trusting me," I told her,
conscious that the bartender had inched closer and could hear every
word.

"Look," Roberta answered quietly. "I'm
helping you out because something has to give. I want you to stop
this bitch. Please."

"I will." I remembered something she had
said earlier. "You said you threw her out of here for fighting. Was
it with Francine?"

"No, a friend of ours named Patsy was trying
to protect Francine. Patsy is one of my regulars and she hates
women like that blond almost as much as I do."

"Or as I do," I added.

She smiled. "Your blond got the worst of it,
too. And no wonder. Picking at your food might make you a size
four, but it's not going to do shit for you in a fistfight. Patsy
doesn't screw around. She takes kick-boxing lessons. She did a
number on that bitch. I kind of enjoyed it, to tell you the
truth."

She stubbed out her cigarette and smiled at
me. "I let it go on for a good five minutes before I broke it up. I
figured the blond deserved it on general principle. After she left,
I found out what the fight was about and Francine told me about the
photographs. It made me wish I'd gotten in a few good licks
myself."

"This was about three weeks ago?" I asked
and, when the bar owner nodded, I had the answer to at least one of
my questions: where Tawny Bledsoe's real bruises had come from.

"There she is." The bar owner slid from her
stool and greeted a skinny redhead standing in the doorway. The
woman looked apprehensive and uncomfortable. At least I had a way
to put her at ease. I had planned to swap the photos for
information, but seeing how her face looked, I figured she deserved
a break.

"These are for you," I said, when the
redhead joined us at the bar. I handed her the photos and envelope.
I'd held one photo back, just in case I needed it. I hoped I
wouldn't. "The negatives are inside," I added. "Do what you want
with them. I don't want them. I'm after the woman who did this to
you."

She grabbed at the stack, then looked
ashamed at her loss of control. Without going through the photos,
she held them in her hands and stared at me, waiting until we were
alone.

Roberta retrieved her drink and cigarettes,
then returned to her seat at the far end of the bar. The bartender,
equally discreet, refilled my glass and placed a beer in front of
my companion before retreating to a far corner. I could have sworn
she threw me a wink on the way down the bar. God help me, I winked
back. Maybe it was only the Jack Daniels, but I was hearing the
lure of the siren song and the tune sounded mighty sweet.

"Who else saw the photos?" the redhead asked
me in a whisper, bringing me back to reality. I knew her first name
was Francine and I didn't ask for a last. She'd given up enough of
her privacy.

"Only a couple of people," I promised. I
noticed the dark circles under her eyes and tried my best not to
stare at her bustline, since then all I would be able to think
about were "sweet potatoes." Thank you Bill Butler. And Jack
Daniels.

"The bartender here saw them," I explained.
"And one at another bar, but she didn't recognize you. And Roberta,
of course. I'm sorry I showed them around, but I had to find you.
If it makes you feel better, no one would recognize you unless they
knew it was you."

"That's the problem." She sat next to me and
stared down at the photos. "If someone who knows me sees them, I'll
lose my job."

"Can you tell me about it?"

It turned out that Francine was a teacher at
a Durham elementary school. And even in these supposedly
enlightened days, the good people of North Carolina were not going
to stand for the homosexual element acting as role models for their
young. Plus, she was from a small farming town and a fundamentally
religious family. Which meant that Francine had a lot more to lose
than her job if her secret was discovered. Tawny Bledsoe, with the
instincts of a shark sniffing out a bloody wound, had gone right
for her.

"At first I was flattered," she told me in a
voice thick with self-disgust. "I couldn't believe that someone
that pretty would pick me."

"How long ago was this?" I asked, dismayed
that lack of self-esteem apparently transcended all sexual
boundaries.

"Three months ago," she said in a low voice.
"I only went home with her that one time. I'd just broken up with a
girlfriend after ten years together and when she started coming on
to me, I don't know. I thought I had to get back out there
sometime, so I had a lot to drink this one night and after we had
danced, she asked me if I wanted to go home with her and I
did."

"What happened then?"

"It took a long time to get to her house in
Raleigh. I was following her in my car and before I even got there,
I was sorry I had agreed to do it. I had no business being on the
road with all I'd had to drink."

I stared guiltily at my own glass of whiskey
while she continued.

"When we got near her house, she stopped her
car and told me to wait. She said she didn't want her babysitter to
see me come in with her." She shrugged. "It didn't really offend
me," she said quickly, though her voice sounded as if it had. "You
have to be careful. I know that. You never know when people are
going to freak out." She missed the irony of this last remark.
"After a couple of minutes, she knocked on the car window and said
the coast was clear."

She took a gulp of her beer, not wanting to
relive the experience. "It was a nice house. I could tell she had a
lot of money because it was a big, ranch-type thing." She looked
down at the photographs and realized where they'd come from. "I
forgot. I guess you've seen the house."

I nodded. "I wasn't exactly invited in."

"Be glad you weren't. When we got to her
bedroom, I started to get freaked out. All of a sudden, it hit me—I
didn't even know her last name. She'd only told me that her name
was Cathy, which I later found out was a lie. And I didn't even
know why the hell I was doing what I was doing."

She paused again and flushed. "I was trying
to think of a way to leave, without hurting her feelings—can you
believe how dumb I was to worry about that? But then she started
doing this weird dance. I mean, look at me. Do I look like the type
of person who'd enjoy seeing someone strip off their clothes? She
put on music and everything. With her kid right there in the other
room."

"She's used to seducing men," I explained.
“Take it from me, they're much more easily entertained."

"Well, it sort of worked. I mean, we did get
going." She hesitated. "How much detail do you need?"

"None," I told her. "I'm more interested in
what happened afterward."

She looked relieved. "I
could tell during it, you know, that her mind was somewhere else. I
couldn't figure out why she'd even bothered to invite me home. I
thought
maybe she didn't like my body when
she saw it or something."

"That woman doesn't like anyone's body but
her own," I assured Francine. "There is nothing wrong with yours."
At least nothing that a few pecans and miniature marshmallows
couldn't improve on, I thought.

"Maybe not," she said. "But I got freaked
out because after about fifteen minutes, she started in with
telling me to hurry it up: I have to go to work in the morning, the
kid might wake up. That kind of thing. That was weird, too. Hurry
what up? It wasn't like I was having any fun myself. I was just
trying to please her. Then the kid did wake up, and started crying
for 'Daddy,' and I really freaked out. But she just ignored the
poor thing and let it cry. She put her clothes back on, asked for
my phone number and said maybe it was better if I left and she'd
call me so we could get together again soon." She paused. "I
thought that was weird, since she'd acted so cold the whole time we
were in bed. But then I thought, maybe I just wasn't very good at
dating. I've never been good at it, I was out of practice and it
was my first one-night stand ever. It all felt so phony and
hollow."

"No one is good at dating," I told her.
"It's a necessary evil. And there's no such thing as a meaningful
one-night stand. I think that's the point of them."

She nodded. "That's what I figured. So I
started to leave and I could hear her yelling at the kid behind me,
and I began to feel really bad about that, and so I decided on the
drive home that there's no way I want to see her again." She took a
gulp of beer and finished in a rush. "A week later, her first phone
call came."

What Tawny Bledsoe wanted, it turned out,
was money. And if she didn't get it, she would go to the principal
of Francine's school with the photographs.

"She didn't show me the actual photos,"
Francine explained, "but I could tell she had them. I knew when I
heard her voice on the phone that I had made a really bad mistake,
even before she told me what she wanted. It was so different from
the way she had sounded before. All of a sudden, her voice seemed
so cold and so distant and so..."

"Businesslike?" I suggested.

"Yes. She didn't care what I said. She
didn't care that I had been a teacher for fifteen years or that my
parents depended on my salary or that it had taken me that long and
more to save what little I had."

"She took it all?"

Francine nodded, unable to speak.

"How much?" I asked softly, putting my hand
on hers.

She pulled her hand away. "Almost twenty
thousand," she whispered. "I gave her twelve thousand from my
savings account and then she wanted more, so I took out a cash
advance on my Visa. After that, I didn't have anything more to give
her."

"So she left you alone?"

"Until three days ago," Francine said, still
in a whisper. "I got another call."

I sat up straight. "She called you three
days ago?''

Francine shook her head. "No. A man called.
He said he was calling for her."

I thought of Jeff and my stomach lurched. "A
man? Did he have a deep Southern accent?"

She nodded. "He sounded like a hick, like he
was from somewhere even further south from here. Georgia,
maybe."

"Or Florida?" I suggested.

She nodded again, biting her lower lip,
trying to keep from crying. "He said he was calling to see if I had
the money I owed Tawny. He didn't even bother to call her Cathy, so
I knew Tawny was her real name."

Another mistake, I thought. She was getting
careless. And that was good.

"I asked him 'what money?' and he said that
I owed her fifteen thousand dollars and that it was way past time I
paid her back."

"Fifteen thousand?" I took a gulp of Jack
Daniels. What was she planning to do? Run away to Mexico?

"I don't have the money," Francine
whispered, her hands shaking. "I told the man that. He got mad. He
said I owed it to her and she needed it. He scared me."

"Did he say anything about the photos?" I
was still hoping that Jeff didn't really know what was going
on.

She shook her head. "No. He just said that I
ought to have the decency to pay people the money I owe them. Then
he said I had a day to come up with the cash and he'd call back for
it. But he never did."